Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed this week that the Pentagon has begun reviewing files related to unidentified aerial phenomena and possible extraterrestrial life.
The directive came from President Trump, who ordered federal agencies to identify and prepare relevant records for public release. Hegseth’s tone was measured. The review is underway.
The timeline is uncertain. He warned reporters not to oversell how long it will take.
Still, the optics are striking. Two former presidents have publicly discussed alien life within weeks of each other. Congressional hearings on UAP have already taken place.
Military pilots have testified under oath about objects they could not explain. What was once late night cable fodder now sits inside official briefings and State of the Union chatter.
Curiosity is not hysteria. The universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies. The Pentagon has confirmed encounters with aerial objects that do not match known flight patterns.
Polling shows that roughly four in ten Americans believe at least some UFO sightings involve alien craft. People are not asking childish questions. They are asking whether the government knows more than it has admitted.
Even if every document is released, however, a more basic problem remains.
The question is not only whether anomalous objects exist. The question is how they are categorized.
Modern discussion defaults to astrophysics. If something moves without visible propulsion, the assumption is advanced technology. If it outpaces known aircraft, the assumption is extraterrestrial engineering.
The debate revolves around materials science, classified programs, or distant star systems.
That is one framework. It is not the only one that has existed.
In my recent response to Russell Moore’s column in Christianity Today, I argued that Christianity does not collapse under the discovery of non human intelligence.
Scripture already affirms the existence of non human beings. Angels are not metaphors in the biblical text. Principalities and powers are not poetic devices.
They are presented as agents who act, speak, and intervene.
The deeper issue is whether modern Christians have trimmed those categories down to greeting card imagery and Renaissance art.
Genesis 6 describes the sons of God taking human women and producing the Nephilim. The passage is brief and uncomfortable. It appears immediately before the flood narrative.
The Hebrew phrase used for sons of God appears elsewhere in the Old Testament to describe heavenly beings, a pattern that Jewish theologians recognize as part of the biblical treatment of heavenly messengers in Torah and prophetic literature.
Later Jewish literature such as 1 Enoch treats the episode as a boundary violation between realms.
You may reject that interpretation. Many do.
But ancient readers did not lack a vocabulary for non human intelligence interacting with humanity. They did not need telescopes to conceive of layered realms. Their cosmology already included them.
This does not mean every radar anomaly is supernatural. It does not mean the Pentagon is hiding angels in a hangar. It does mean that the modern conversation assumes only two choices.
Either advanced human technology or visitors from another planet.
That binary did not exist in the ancient text.
The Pentagon review may clarify misidentified drones. It may expose bureaucratic confusion. It may confirm that some footage reflects sensor glitches.
It may reveal nothing dramatic at all. What it cannot do is answer the metaphysical question.
If non human intelligence exists, the question will not simply be where it came from, but how we interpret it. And interpretation depends on categories we may have quietly abandoned.
– Will Blesch, author, In the Shadow of Goliath
Sources:
- Dier, Arden. “Hegseth: We’re on That Review of UFO Files.” Newser, February 25, 2026. https://www.newser.com/story/384345/hegseth-review-of-ufo-files-is-underway.html
- Aitken, Peter. “Trump Directs Hegseth to Release Government Files on Aliens.” Newsweek, February 19, 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-pete-hegseth-release-government-files-ufo-aliens-11552597
- Blesch, William. “Russell Moore Is Right but Genesis 6 Still Matters.” WilliamBlesch.com. Accessed February 2026. https://www.williamblesch.com/russell-moore-is-right-but-genesis-6-still-matters/
- Jewish Theological Seminary. “Angel or Avatar?” JTS Torah. Accessed February 2026. https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/angel-or-avatar/
